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Hearts and minds don’t come cheap in football. For Birmingham City’s American ownership group, the bill is being paid one pint at a time.
A fortnight ago, at an away game of transatlantic interests, that arrangement caused a scene of mild amusement.
The expedition to The Turf pub in Wrexham had been led by City’s chairman, the billionaire financier Tom Wagner, and he was accompanied by an assortment of his commercial partners.
That’s been a routine since Knighthead Capital took over in the summer of 2023 – Wagner will fly in from his base in New York, usually once a week, and before getting to each game he picks a spot for a drink close to wherever Birmingham are playing. Ahead of League One’s ‘Hollywood derby’, that proved to be expensive.
‘Tom put his card behind the bar,’ a senior figure at the club recalled to Mail Sport this week, with the added detail that Wagner and two executives from Delta Airlines received a round of pantomime boos from the natives when they stepped out of their cars. They were more popular a couple of hours later.
‘I can’t tell you precisely how much it cost, but there were fans from Birmingham and Wrexham in there and it ended up in the thousands.’
Birmingham are flying high at the top of League One in their bid to seal a return to the Championship at the first opportunity
American football legend Tom Brady is one of the Blues’ key stakeholders and was in the stands for the ‘Hollywood derby’ with Wrexham
Billionaire financier Tom Wagner has compared plans for a new 60,000-seater stadium in 2029 to a spaceship
It was a similar story when Birmingham played Preston away prior to relegation last season – that bill had reached around £2,500 by the time they left.
And same goes for most home games, which will include today’s FA Cup fourth-round tie with Newcastle United.
A resurrection on the pitch has cost a relative fortune for a League One club, but winning over the fans was written into the business plan after the dire neglect of the last ownership group, Birmingham Sports Holdings.
Whether these are optics or something more meaningful will only be told over a sustained length of time. But the moods and ambitions around Birmingham City have lifted dramatically – being a street clear at the top of League One helps.
So have £24million-plus of signings, the surreal presence of Tom Brady among their stakeholders and plans for a new 60,000-seater stadium in 2029, compared to a ‘spaceship’ by Wagner.
In the longer term, he is already lobbying the government on proposals for a £3bn ‘Sports Quarter’, which will be built on a 48-acre site in the east of the city, featuring the new stadium and training ground above a network of underground transport tunnels.
In the past week alone, Wagner has moved to buy a 49 per cent stake in the Birmingham Phoenix cricket franchise.
Wagner’s broader goals amount to one of the most fascinating projects in British sport, not least for his willingness to fire up expectations.
The new planned 60,000-seat stadium that Birmingham City want to build
Brady holds a 3.3 per cent stake in Birmingham and has a big role behind the scenes
If Birmingham City have long held a status as a weak link in the region, dwarfed by the histories of Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest, then efforts to change the order will not be done in silence.
As Wagner told Mail Sport this week: ‘Birmingham City is going to be one of the biggest stories in world football in the next decade.
‘Games against teams like Newcastle United in the FA Cup, being viewed around the globe, are important to showcase what is starting to happen at the club.’
They are big claims, especially in light of how this journey began.
The teething problems under the Knighthead regime are still fresh in the memory – sacking John Eustace when the club were sixth in the Championship was one error.
Another was the starry-eyed misadventure that saw Wayne Rooney in charge for 83 days, putting City into the tailspin that landed them in the third tier for the first time in 30 seasons.
The embarrassment of that period was best encapsulated by the experience of Brady, whose 3.3 percent stake in the club was raised to a wider audience the day after relegation.
When Netflix filmed a ‘Roast’ show in his honour, one of the guests making gags at his expense was the great Bill Belichick, the coach with whom Brady dominated the NFL for two decades.
Birmingham’s 26,000 average attendance is more than 5,000 higher than the next best in League One this season
Manager Chris Davies is repairing the damage done by sacking John Eustace and replacing him with Wayne Rooney
Taking the microphone and looking across to Brady, Belichick said: ‘I see your soccer team, Birmingham City, got knocked down to another tier in the English Football League.
‘For those not familiar with English football and the intricacies of their system, I’ll put it in English for you – they suck! Not so easy running a team, is it Tom?’
In the here and now, Birmingham are bouncing after the fall. Led by Chris Davies, a 39-year-old manager poached from Ange Postecoglou’s coaching staff at Tottenham, they have lost only twice in the league this season.
Wagner’s previously stated hope is to reach the Premier League by 2026 and one of his close confidantes at the club was only slightly more reserved in predicting to Mail Sport that it will take three years.
The source spoke of a ’20-year project, not a buy-and-flip’.
The figures involved in the pursuit of these targets have been astonishing. The £24million spree on 14 players in the summer window was wildly unique for the division and peaked with the transfer of Fulham striker Jay Stansfield for around £15m, trebling the League One record.
Grant Hanley and Lee Myung-Jae, internationals from Scotland and South Korea, followed in the most recent window.
There is a tangible buzz around the place. A long-time season-ticket holder, Trevor Willis, who runs the New York branch of the club’s supporters’ club, said: ‘The Wayne Rooney appointment was a tiny dent but I don’t think there’s a Blues fan out there that’s not excited for the future.
‘Compared to what we were used to before, where no one really knew from day to day what was going on with the club, there is so much optimism.
‘It’s not just about how the team is going – it’s about improvements to the stadium, spending some money, being kept in the picture. The club is trying to do something and that means a lot to fans of any club.
‘It’s surreal – you have Tom Brady turning up. It’s a really exciting time.’
There’s a natural question to be asked about where Birmingham’s spending falls within the limits of EFL financial rules.
To that end, Wagner has followed the vogue of amortising deals over lengthy contracts, but they have greater freedoms through their sheer financial commercial power.
It is huge, with revenues of £20-£30m forecast for this season, which would rank favourably in the top half of the Championship, and those sums have predominantly been drawn from two directions.
The first comes from the size of attendances at St Andrew’s – with refurbishments completed in 2023 following asbestos-related closures, their average crowd for the current campaign is 26,000. That puts them top of League One by more than 5,000.
The second aspect comes from sponsorship and a concerted effort to crack America. That points to the Brady factor.
There is a level of cynicism externally about the depth of his involvement beyond the promotion of his TBRx performance brand – he has attended only three games and one pub in 18 months.
The club strongly dispute that the former quarter-back is a PR gimmick, with Davies having spoken of ‘regular’ contact around nutrition and physical preparation, and Wagner says he receives daily calls. Days off after a matchday have been shelved at the latter’s suggestion.
But his impact is most likely being felt at its sharpest in the club’s attractiveness to stateside brands. In addition to Delta Airlines and a hefty collaboration with the LA-based sportswear company Undefeated, sources say another major deal with a tourism board will be announced this weekend to coincide with the Newcastle tie.
While the club’s cut-through in the US has not matched that of Ryan Reynolds’ Wrexham, Birmingham’s growth in that area has given them a cash stream alien to most clubs they might face in the Championship if promotion is secured.
That was demonstrated last month, when the fixture between the sides was shown in Cosm’s ‘immersive reality’ facilities in Dallas and LA.
And as my colleague Mike Keegan revealed last summer, Birmingham have other ambitious plans – asking to move their home game with Wrexham this season to be played in the States.
To date, three new Birmingham supporters’ clubs have sprung up across the Atlantic and Mail Sport has been told 28 per cent of their BluesTV subscriptions comes from the US.
It has become the third largest market for their social channels and Mail Sport’s understanding is that a behind-the-scenes documentary, ideally featuring Brady, is in the pipeline.
The deeper relevance there for Birmingham fans is that the club will trigger a further £3m payout from Knighthead as part of their naming-rights arrangement if they hit 600m social media impressions in any given season.
They expect to pass that number in the current campaign, according to club sources.
‘Sports fans in the US are waking up to what is happening at the club,’ Wagner said. ‘This has been helped by the involvement of Tom Brady and by the support of leading US brands like Undefeated and Delta Airlines.’
With the conclusion this weekend of the NFL season, where Brady has been tied to a 10-year, $375m (£301m) broadcasting role with Fox, the expectation at Birmingham is that their banner name will appear at St Andrew’s again before the close of the League One campaign.
That would generate more noise than a crowded bar and will also cover the cost of a few hundred pints.
If other predictions come to pass, Belichick might have to reevaluate his assessment.
